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This photo taken on June 16, 2016 shows workers and crew loading supplies and ice to a fishing vessel anchored at the mouth of the South China Sea off the town of Infanta in Pangasinan province, as they prepare for a fishing expedition to Scarborough...

China and the Philippines have frozen for the past year their dispute over rights to the shoal and surrounding waters, where both look for fish as well as fuel under the seabed. They’re trying to get along instead, evidenced by China’s offers of development aid to the Philippines. Chinese coast guard vessels now control the 150-square-kilometer, environmentally sensitive shoal but let Philippine fishing boats use the nearby waters.

Someday China will still build at the shoal, a lot of analysts believe. Backed up by the region’s strongest armed forces, it now controls about 90% of the disputed sea. Scarborough construction is “still on the table,” says Jay Batongbacal, director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines. When and how? Three scenarios:

1. China builds anytime. The trend is clear. Over 2017 Beijing built 290,000 square meters of “new real estate” on six other disputed islets in the 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative under American think than Center for Strategic and International Studies. But Chinese construction work without Philippine input could set off an outcry among Filipinos against President Rodrigo Duterte’s friendly China ties – also prized by Beijing. “So far there are no movements on the Scarborough Shoal because of the compact with Duterte,” says Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The shoal, he said, is “too close for comfort to the Philippine mainland.” It's about 200 kilometers away from Luzon Island.

2. The United States pushes China to build. If the United States steps up or formalizes its freedom-of-navigation naval exercises in the South China Sea – moves aimed at debunking Chinese ownership claims – Beijing may cite that as a reason to build more at sea in the name of self-defense, Koh says. The U.S. could also expand annual naval drills with the Philippines to include the South China Sea, another jab at China if it happened. Would U.S. President Donald Trump use the Philippines to base military operations aimed at containing North Korea? “There’s the possibility that it could be trigged by the Korean crisis, if for some reason China sees some kind of strong signal the Americans would be back in the Philippines,” Batongbacal says.

U.S. Marines amphibious assault vehicles speed past a landing ship during an amphibious landing exercise on a Philippine beach April 21, 2015, as part of annual Philippine-US joint maneuvers some 220 kilometers east of Scarborough Shoal (TED...

3. Construction starts under the next Philippine president. Philippine presidents can serve just one six-year term, so Duterte must step down in 2022. His predecessor Benigno Aquino disliked Chinese maritime expansion including its occupation of the shoal since 2012 so bitterly that he filed for world court arbitration and won in 2016. China rejected the ruling. If the next Philippine leader turns back against China, perhaps to acknowledge anti-Chinese sentiments among the public and military officials, China might see no reason to hold out at Scarborough Shoal. “Just because Duterte is pro-Beijing doesn’t mean public opinion is and it certainly doesn’t mean the armed forces of the Philippines is,” says Asia Maritime Transparency Institute director Gregory Poling. China’s construction plans, he adds are not “a matter of can they do it” but “a matter of when they do it.”